Former Senator Al Franken (D-MN) announced on Twitter his “The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour Tour” with 15 events scheduled for later this year.
Said Franken: “My promise is that you’ll laugh, you’ll think, and you’ll leave hopeful about our future. Unless I’m in a bad mood that night.”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Washington, DC police officer Michael Fanone, who was badly hurt during the January 6 insurrection and has been trying to set up a meeting with him, told CNN: “I’d gladly meet with him. We gave him the phone number to the scheduler and said we’d love to meet with you. Unfortunately he hasn’t followed up.”
But Fanone told the New York Times that McCarthy’s statement was “bullshit,” and said that no one gave him a phone number.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told members of Congress that he wants to learn more about critical race theory and doesn’t see any harm in it.
Said Milley: “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.”
“The U.S. intelligence community concluded last week that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after the American military withdrawal from the country is completed,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
A new Quinnipiac poll in Texas finds 46% of voters think Gov. Greg Abbott (R) deserves to be reelected, while 48% say he does not deserve to be reelected.
With former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D) not ruling out a possible challenge to Abbott in 2022, voters overall say they would not like to see him run for governor, 52% to 41%.
Another name gaining attention for a possible gubernatorial run is actor Matthew McConaughey, whose party affiliation is unclear. While 41% of voters say they would like to see him run, 47% say they would not like to see him run.
Steve Benen: “Who can forget Richard Grenell, who was forced to delete hundreds of sexist comments from his social media accounts and who operated as a prominent online troll for far too long.”
“Care to guess which ‘moderate’ senator voted to confirm him? If you said Collins, you’re correct.”
“The point, of course, is that Collins seemed to have little trouble voting for ‘unusually divisive’ nominees in the Trump era, but under Biden, the Maine Republican has adopted a different set of standards.”
PBS Newshour details the position each of the 50 Democratic Senators has taken on reforming the filibuster:
Vice President Harris will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, amid mounting criticism from Republicans that neither she nor President Biden has traveled to the country’s southern border, the Washington Post reports.
Playbook: “Harris is clearly trying to get ahead of what’s become a favorite GOP talking point: hitting her for not having visited the border.”
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) vetoed legislation that would have barred transgender girls and women from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity, calling the proposal a “solution in search of a problem that does not exist in Louisiana,” the Baton Rouge Advocate reports.
“The trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy concluded Tuesday in Paris, after a month during which the court sought to determine whether he broke laws on campaign financing in his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The verdict is to be delivered on Sept. 30. Prosecutors have requested a six-month prison term, as well as a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of about $4,500.”
House retirement announcements are running slightly above the pace of the 2018 and 2020 cycles, according to Ballotpedia.
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.”
“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.”
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.
“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.'”
A group of nearly 40 House Republicans is launching a Conservative Climate Caucus on Wednesday, the Washington Examiner reports.
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.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.