Where Things Stand: Dems Compare Fox To Russian TV For Not Airing Jan 6 Hearings Live

Fox News couldn’t possibly cut off its star attraction.

Tucker Carlson’s show airs from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET. The Jan. 6 committee hearing’s debut on Thursday begins at 8 as well. It’s hardly a surprise that the network announced yesterday that it won’t air at least the first hearing live — Tucker has amassed a cult following, coming out on top consistently with the highest ratings of any show on cable news networks.

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One Potential Supreme Court Case Could Transform US Election Law

The voting rights legal community is holding its breath these days for the moment when the U.S. Supreme Court formally announces whether it will take a case that could fundamentally transform the way election laws work. 

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What Triggers The State ‘Trigger Laws’ That Could Ban Abortions?

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion on abortion rights dramatically declares that “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

A number of states have already made their choice in case that happens, either protecting the right to abortion or significantly restricting abortion under most circumstances. Some states never removed bans they had in place before 1973. That’s the year of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade declaring that the Constitution protects the right to obtain an abortion.

In addition, there are 13 states with so-called “trigger” laws, abortion-restricting laws designed to take effect once abortion is no longer protected by the U.S. Constitution. I’m a legal scholar who studies gender and reproductive rights and wanted to see just what those triggers are that will put the laws into force. It turns out that the 13 states are almost evenly split between two distinct approaches with one thing in common: They both end up significantly limiting people’s right to get an abortion.

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Trump Pushed Secret Service To Let Him Join March To The Capitol Weeks Before Jan. 6

In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, former President Trump reportedly attempted to pressure the Secret Service to devise a plan for him to join his supporters on a march to the Capitol, two people briefed on witnesses’ accounts to congressional investigators told the Washington Post.

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So Where Are We Here?

Updated at 8:47 PM eastern

As always, it’s fascinating to hear from you about what you hear from your senators on a Roe protecting bill and the filibuster. I wanted to give you a quick summary of what we’ve heard so far.

So far we have these Senators who have either publicly stated support for a Roe bill and changed filibuster rules or their offices told constituents that they did.

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What We Know About The Focus Of The Jan. 6 Committee Public Hearings

With just two days to go before the debut of the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s public hearings, new details have emerged on potential witnesses and the focus of the first hearing.

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Specificity is the Whole Game

I’ve been leafing through your emails about contacting or not contacting your senators. I love these emails because ordinary citizens are able to find things out in a way that professional journalists often are not. But in many cases I hear from TPM Readers who say something like, Great you’re doing this but no point in contacting my senators in Generic Blue State because they’re definitely pro-choice and they aren’t crazy about the filibuster. I can’t stress this enough: It really doesn’t matter much until it’s a specific statement about this in particular: changing the filibuster rules to pass a Roe-protecting bill in the next Congress.

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Trump Camp Urged Fake Georgia Electors To Keep Scheme Cloaked In ‘Complete Secrecy,’ Email Shows

Then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign seemed at least vaguely aware that the fake Trump elector scheme was something of a shady cloak-and-dagger operation, as indicated by an email from a campaign director obtained by the Washington Post and CNN.

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Not On the Radar

TPM Reader RP called up her senators in Michigan and putting Roe on the ballot in November doesn’t seem to have registered.

Thanks to Josh for yesterday’s piece, “Have You Called Your Senator?” I called Sen. Peter’s regional office in Marquette, MI to ask whether he’d go on record in favor of changing the filibuster to allow a Roe bill to pass next Congress. The guy on the phone had no idea what I was talking about. I called Senator Stabenow’s local office—ditto.