Denial Ain’t Just A River In Egypt

Hello! It’s the weekend, this is The Weekender. ☕

The midterm elections loom on the horizon — for many, as ominous as a storm cloud.

A new report released this week found that election deniers, or Trump loyalists who’ve advanced the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged, are running to oversee the democratic process in 27 states this November. At least 43 candidates are running for governor, attorney general or secretary of state across the country. In two swing states — Arizona and Michigan — they’re running to fill all three seats. Meanwhile, election officials and poll workers have received so many threats against their safety since the 2020 election that several state legislatures have passed laws to reinforce their security. (Click here or head to TPM’s homepage to read my latest.)

A slight shift in the atmosphere could hint at a change in the winds: Some formerly outspoken big lie candidates have begun to self-censor as they approach the general election, including Republican New Hampshire Senate hopeful retired Gen. Don Bolduc, who said this week on Fox News that “the election was not stolen,” even though he just last month bragged about signing a letter endorsing the Big Lie.

Bolduc is running in a state where Biden won with seven percentage points, and his shift might hint at a broader GOP sense that denialism isn’t quite a winning strategy outside of deep red jurisdictions.

So, what’s the forecast this fall? Election chaos or the status quo? We’ll find out soon enough.

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kaila Philo

Lindsey Graham v. The Republicans

This week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) decided to promptly upset the primary Republican talking point and defense since Dobbs: that all they’re doing is returning the contentious, divisive issue to the states. Let the people — and their highly gerrymandered state legislatures — decide.

Until Graham, less than two months out from the midterms, decided to say the quiet part out loud.

Flanked by a phalanx of anti-abortion women, Graham unveiled a 15-week national abortion ban, which he promised there’d be a vote on just as soon as Republicans win both chambers of Congress.

Senate Republicans started backpedaling as fast as their little legs could carry them.

“I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when asked if he’d schedule the bill for a vote, should Republicans win the Senate.

Graham has so foiled their plans because he told the truth. Of course Republicans will pass a national abortion ban when they can. They’ll probably go after birth control and emergency contraceptives too, more minor priorities of the anti-abortion movement.

Graham’s bill is exactly where they actually come down on the issue: leave abortion to the red states, who will dependably ban it completely. And then impose Republican will on the blue ones, forcing them to ban it whether they want to or not. 

— Kate Riga

Has The Tide Turned? 

This week Ukraine took stock of its gains from its northern counteroffensive, in which its forces advanced to retake nearly the entire region of Kharkiv. The euphoria that the Ukrainian military brought has very quickly been swept away by grim accounting. The country’s investigators are beginning to examine evidence of war crimes committed under the Russian occupation, and to take stock of the damage wrought on civilians during the weeks and months of battles involved in Russia’s initial offensive in the region.

A lot of this has taken place in and around Izyum, the biggest city retaken by Ukraine, and one that Russia spent around six weeks in March and April to initially seize. Ukraine liberated it after a few days of fighting this past month.

But the stories that emerge are heart-wrenching, in part because they’re almost certain to have been identical to other areas that have seen heavy fighting: random extrajudicial torture and killings by Russian forces, bombs demolishing apartment blocks that leave people moaning under the rubble with no hope of rescue.

The vast majority of these stories will go untold, even in the case of a Ukrainian victory. But there is a growing sense that that may be approaching. Putin himself acknowledged the Ukrainian victory for the first time on Friday, noting that the counteroffensive wasn’t over, saying, “we’ll see how it ends.”

— Josh Kovensky

• Former Bush administration Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has a 9/11 tradition. Almost every year since 2013, Fleischer has gathered his notes and his recollections, then live-tweeted the events of September 11 as he and President George W. Bush experienced them. It’s a spectacle that revives the atmosphere of the immediate aftermath of the attacks and the environment that the Bush administration stoked to create the War on Terror. But this year, things are different. Read more here. 
• Texts on far-right Infowars host Alex Jones’ phone reveal that the conspiracy theorist has been secretly surveilling his ex-wife, Kelly Jones, and current wife, Erika Wulff Jones, in recent years through private spies and informers. 
• A newly unsealed copy of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit with fewer redactions shows how federal prosecutors grew suspicious of former President Trump and his attorneys in the weeks leading up to the August raid on the property. Read Josh Kovensky’s deep-dive here. 
• It Appears That MTG Is Now Kicking Young Activists Who Ask Her About Gun Violence …