The board that administers Pulitzer Prizes denied former President Trump’s request to revoke the prizes that the Washington Post and the New York Times won in 2018 for their reports on the Trump campaign and his administration’s ties to Russian interference in the presidential election.
Continue reading “Pulitzer Board Rejects Trump’s Demand To Yank Prizes From Post And NYT”Where Things Stand: Anti-Abortion Group’s New Memo Highlights GOPers Squirming On Roe
In case you missed it, it’s worth looking at this memo that the big anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America sent to Republican lawmakers last week outlining messaging points and policy proposals for the party to push in the wake of Roe’s demise.
The messaging tight-rope they’re walking to avoid fully dancing on Roe’s grave remains interesting.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Anti-Abortion Group’s New Memo Highlights GOPers Squirming On Roe”Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on The Current Moment
We are in one of those moments where we are awash in debates over the failures of “the Democratic Party.” (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a moment.) It’s a conversation I enter with great ambivalence. Most of my commentary over the last twenty-odd years has been about trying to push Democrats to take more aggressive and forward-looking strategies for building political power, political coalitions and so forth. Indeed, I’ve been doing that for the last few months through my “Roe and Reform” crusade. But a huge amount of this debate is advanced by people who see the success of rightwing candidates as prima facie evidence of the failure of Democrats.
From one perspective, this is true. In a binary political system, for one side to win the other has to lose. But at a deeper level a lot of these people don’t want to accept or grapple with the fact that a lot of Americans really want rightist authoritarian government. It’s not just that Democrats didn’t run good enough candidates, or didn’t get behind Medicare for All or didn’t say clearly enough that they weren’t for Defund the Police. Disappointment with Democrats not being more progressive didn’t lead voters to embrace the right. A lot of people really want rightist authoritarian government.
Continue reading “Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on The Current Moment”Jody Hice Subpoenaed In Fulton County DA Probe Into Trump’s Election Steal Plot
A new court filing reveals that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis subpoenaed Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) last month to appear before a special grand jury in the Fulton County investigation into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the battleground state.
Continue reading “Jody Hice Subpoenaed In Fulton County DA Probe Into Trump’s Election Steal Plot”Pence And Ducey Clash With Trump On Another Key Guv Race
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who co-chairs the Republican Governors Association (RGA), are once again facing off against ex-President Donald Trump in a crucial gubernatorial primary — this time in Ducey’s backyard.
Continue reading “Pence And Ducey Clash With Trump On Another Key Guv Race”The List is Coming, Folks
We’ve spent a few weeks now piecing through various senators’ answer to the Roe and Reform question: will you vote for a Roe law and suspend the filibuster rules to allow it to get an up or down majority vote? We’ve seen or gotten answers for a number of senators — particularly ones whose positions seemed genuinely uncertain: Feinstein, Casey, et al. But now we’re at the point where we need to zero in on just who is where and specifically who is standing in the way of 48 senators all being on the record in support.
Continue reading “The List is Coming, Folks”Sanders Goes After Manchin For ‘Intentionally Sabotaging The President’s Agenda’
Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) latest torpedoing of a deal carefully negotiated within the Democratic caucus provoked Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) very candid anger over the weekend.
Continue reading “Sanders Goes After Manchin For ‘Intentionally Sabotaging The President’s Agenda’”Cruz Attacks ‘Clearly Wrong’ SCOTUS Ruling On Marriage Equality
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Saturday tore into the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized gay marriage in 2015, calling it the high court “overreaching.”
Continue reading “Cruz Attacks ‘Clearly Wrong’ SCOTUS Ruling On Marriage Equality”Biden Finally Ditches Plan To Nominate Anti-Abortion Judge–But Not For The Right Reason
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Slow Clap
Biden won’t be going through with his shocking plan to nominate Chad Meredith, an anti-abortion Federalist Society Republican, to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, the White House announced on Friday – but not because the president finally realized the nomination was a terrible idea.
- No, it was because Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) refused to give the White House the “blue slip” consenting to Meredith’s nomination. That’s right, it was a Republican who scuttled the whole thing.
- And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the New York Times that he hadn’t promised Biden anything in exchange for Meredith’s appointment. It would’ve just been Biden extending a “personal friendship gesture” to McConnell, according to the GOP leader:
Heartwarming stuff!
Key Analyses
“Just 3 Weeks Post-Roe, The Stories Emerging Are Worse Than Anyone Imagined” – Jezebel
“The False Piety of the Anti-Abortion Movement” – New York Magazine
3 Left Dead After Gunman Opens Fire In Indiana Mall
A gunman killed three people and injured two others after shooting up a food court at a mall in Greenwood, Indiana on Sunday, local authorities reported.
- The suspect was fatally shot by an armed bystander, according to the police.
- The gunman’s identity and motive have not been determined, the mayor of Greenwood reported.
A local reporter spoke to a store employee who said she left the entrance gate open to let in people fleeing from the shooting:
Texas House Report Details Utter Failings Of Cop Response To Uvalde
The Texas House committee tasked with investigating law enforcement’s feeble response to the Uvalde elementary school shooting released a 77-page report on Sunday detailing the “systemic failings” by not just the local school police chief, but also by state and federal officers during the massacre, which went on for 77 minutes before any of them went into the classroom to stop the shooter.
Previewing Jan. 6 Panel’s Potentially Last Hearing
The House Jan. 6 Committee will be holding what could be its final public hearing on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, the panel’s first hearing to be held during primetime since its inaugural session last month. This is some of what we know based on what the committee members said during yesterday’s morning shows:
- The focus of the hearing: How Trump stood by and did nothing while the Capitol was under attack by his own riled-up supporters.
- The committee will comb through “pretty much minute by minute” of the period between Trump leaving his rally to the Capitol attack, according to Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), who’ll be leading the hearing with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
- The panel members made it clear that their investigation isn’t over, even if this ends up being the last public hearing. New witnesses and information are still coming in, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).
Bannon To Face The Music
After repeatedly failing to put it off, ex-Trump White House crony Steve Bannon will be having his criminal contempt trial today for refusing to cooperate with the House Jan. 6 Committee, which had subpoenaed him ten months ago.
- Bannon potentially at least 30 days in jail for each of the two charges if he’s found guilty.
- Prosecutors hope to keep this short, saying they’ll be presenting their case against Bannon over just a few days.
Europe Endures Massive Heat Wave
The U.K. has declared a national emergency as the country faces record-breaking heat of 41°C/106°F on Monday, its hottest temperature yet.
- The British government directly attributed the crisis to climate change, with a researcher at the U.K.’s Met Office saying that the chances of seeing 40°C days in the country “could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.”
- Thousands of people in Spain, France and Portugal are expected to evacuate to escape wildfires caused by the heat.
Cruz Says SCOTUS Should’ve Never Legalized Gay Marriage
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made it clear during his podcast on Saturday that if he, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had his way, gay marriage would still be illegal in states that had banned it before the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges case.
- Cruz compared Obergefell to Roe v. Wade as rulings that “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history” and decided on issues that should’ve been left to the states. Obergefell was “clearly wrong when it was decided,” the Republican argued.
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Her Ex-Husband Is Suing A Clinic Over The Abortion She Had Four Years Ago
This article was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
Nearly four years after a woman ended an unwanted pregnancy with abortion pills obtained at a Phoenix clinic, she finds herself mired in an ongoing lawsuit over that decision.
A judge allowed the woman’s ex-husband to establish an estate for the embryo, which had been aborted in its seventh week of development. The ex-husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic and its doctors in 2020, alleging that physicians failed to obtain proper informed consent from the woman as required by Arizona law.
Continue reading “Her Ex-Husband Is Suing A Clinic Over The Abortion She Had Four Years Ago”