GOP Official In Ohio Admits to Voting Twice
A Republican official in Ohio admitted to forging his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot in the 2020 presidential election, NBC News reports.
Edward Snodgrass, a Porter Township trustee, called it “an honest error.”
Supreme Court Sides with Student Who Cursed Online
“The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds,” CNN reports.
“The 8-1 majority opinion was penned by Justice Stephen Breyer.”
Matt Gaetz Suggests Defunding the FBI
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweeted that Democrats should defund the FBI, then deleted the tweet, the Washington Post reports.
The FBI is investigating Gaetz’s possible role in child sex trafficking.
Republicans Attack Warnock Over ‘Welfare for Politicians’
“In the pushback to the For the People Act, the National Senatorial Campaign Committee released a series of ads hitting Democratic senators for voting for the bill,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“But it was the ad against Sen. Raphael Warnock that raised some eyebrows, since it framed Warnock’s support for the elections bill as ‘welfare for politicians.’ Warnock, who is Georgia’s first Black senator, grew up in public housing in Savannah and was the only senator to be tagged by the GOP with the ‘welfare’ pejorative.”
“A spot focused on Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, for example, billed the legislation as a ‘Washington waste plan,’ while another hitting Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, used the phrase ‘this isn’t rocket science.'”
House Republicans Launch Climate Caucus
A group of nearly 40 House Republicans is launching a Conservative Climate Caucus on Wednesday, the Washington Examiner reports.
GOP Investigation Finds No Vote Fraud In Michigan
A months-long Republican investigation into Michigan’s 2020 election uncovered no evidence of widespread fraud and concluded Wednesday with a recommendation the attorney general investigate those who made false claims for “personal gain,” Bridge Michigan reports.
From the report: “Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan. The committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”
Socialist Defeats 4-Term Incumbent Mayor of Buffalo
“India Walton, the community activist barely known to many Buffalo voters just months ago, shocked four-term incumbent Byron Brown in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for mayor in what may rank as the most historic upset in the city’s political history,” the Buffalo News reports.
NBC News: “If Walton, 39, wins the primary and the general election later this year, she would become the first socialist mayor of a large American city since 1960, when Frank Zeidler left office in Milwaukee.”
Walton was captured on video telling her mother that she won.
How Democrats Fumbled the Voting Rights Debate
Dan Pfeiffer: “It’s now abundantly clear there was never a plan to do either. In fairness, Manchin was incredibly vague about the reasons for his opposition to the bill for a very long time. His only public comments were meaningless bromides about bipartisanship. Democratic Senators reportedly pressed him for more specifics. Until the other day, he offered nothing. But in the end, he suggested a reasonable, if unsatisfying, compromise that received the support of Stacey Abrams and Barack Obama.”
“Yet, the party was unable to coalesce around it and offer a unified front. The night before the vote, Democratic Senators were still openly debating strategy and discussing breaking the bill up into pieces — something that had been suggested weeks before. With just hours to go, there was still confusion about which version of the bill would be voted on. It is truly impossible to imagine why these problems were not anticipated and addressed long before the vote was scheduled.”
Ivanka Trump Seeks Distance from Her Father
CNN: “Sometimes the former President complains for several hours about the ‘stolen’ 2020 election. Other times, his frustrations emerge in fits and starts — more likely when he is discussing his hopeful return to national politics. And while he often has a rotating audience of cheering listeners, the gap between Trump and his daughter and son-in-law grows wider by the week.”
“Ivanka Trump has also struggled to undo the entanglements caused by the years at her father’s side in the White House, as she seeks a less complicated life for her family… They described her as having to walk a fine line between embracing her father and distancing herself from his election lies.”
Hunger Surges for National Guard Families
“National Guard and reserve soldiers are having trouble feeding their families due to a year of record deployments,” the Washington Post reports.
“Hunger among Guard members and reservists is more than double the national rate.”
Trump Hoped COVID Would ‘Take Out’ John Bolton
Former President Donald Trump said that he hoped the coronavirus would take out his former national security adviser, John Bolton, who had just written an explosive tell-all about his time in the White House, Axios reports.
Here’s the passage from the new book, Nightmare Scenario:
Trump had tried to joke about the virus for months, sometimes even mocking people who had become ill… At one meeting several months before Trump got sick, NEC director Larry Kudlow had stifled a cough. The room had frozen… Trump had waved his hands in front of his face, as if to jokingly ward off any flying virus particles, and then cracked a smile. “I was just kidding,” he’d said. “Larry will never get COVID. He will defeat it with his optimism.” … “John Bolton,” he had said … “Hopefully COVID takes out John.”
Inside Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year
This will be a must-read: I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Axios: “With the swelter of Trump books that begins this summer, authors have been keeping their publishing plans secret. This publishing date puts Leonnig and Rucker a week ahead of the juggernaut Michael Wolff, whose Landslide is scheduled for July 27.”
“Leonnig and Rucker, both Pulitzer winners, are authors of a No. 1 bestseller on Trump, A Very Stable Genius.”
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Leonnig, Carol (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 592 Pages - 07/20/2021 (Publication Date) - Penguin Press (Publisher)
Home Prices Skyrocket
“U.S. home prices in May experienced their biggest annual increase in more than two decades, as a shortage of properties and low borrowing rates fueled demand,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The median existing-home sales price in May topped $350,000 for the first time… The figure was nearly 24% higher than a year ago, the biggest year-over-year price increase… going back to 1999.”
Manchin Suggests He’s Open to New Reconciliation Bill
“A key moderate Democratic senator opened the door Tuesday to investing in President Joe Biden’s ‘human infrastructure’ proposals and unwinding some of the Republican tax cuts of 2017,” NBC News reports.
“Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is working to ink a bipartisan deal to fund physical infrastructure, expressed openness to a separate filibuster-proof package to make economic investments, although he said the size and scope have yet to be determined.”
Said Manchin: “Republicans have drawn a line in the sand on not changing anything, and I thought the 2017 tax bill was a very unfair bill, and weighted to a side that basically did not benefit the average American. So I voted against it. I think there are some adjustments that need to be made.”
Considering his state voted for Donald Trump by 39 percentage points in 2020, it’s actually amazing Manchin sides with Democrats as much as he does.
Births Plummeted After Lockdowns
“Nine months after the declaration of a national emergency due to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. births fell by 8% in a month,” Bloomberg reports.
“For the full year, the number of babies born in the country fell 4% to about 3.6 million, the largest decline since 1973… The latest data are early evidence of the drastic impact from the health crisis on birth rates, with the full effect expected to show in 2021 data.”
A Wake Up Call for Democrats
“Democrats, in private and public, are warning that rising crime — and the old and new progressive calls to defund the police — represent the single biggest threat to their electoral chances in 2022,” Axios reports.
“Democrats say it’s no coincidence that Eric Adams, the leader in the New York City mayoral race, ran against defunding the police.”
Democrats Have No Backup Plan for Voting Rights
Politico: “After months of build-up, Democrats are boxed in on their party’s signature election reform plan. And there’s no apparent escape route. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ sweeping ethics and elections legislation on Tuesday, a filibuster that many in President Joe Biden’s party hoped would turbocharge the demise of the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for most bills. But Democratic moderates’ support of the filibuster has only hardened in recent days.”
“It gets worse for Biden’s party: Now that the GOP has rejected debating the legislation that would overhaul federal elections, Democrats are without a new strategy to show party activists some momentum before the 2022 midterms. At the moment, the party doesn’t have a backup plan on elections and Democratic senators acknowledged their internal maneuvering over the filibuster has only begun after months of dominating their time in control of Washington.”
The Grio: Pelosi vows voting rights bills “will pass this year,” despite Republican stonewall.
