President Joe Biden’s planned visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel later this month have been postponed until July, NBC News reports.
Josh Gerstein: “Best time for a president’s foreign trip in an election year: never. Next best: later.”
Yellen Wanted Biden Relief Plan Cut by a Third
“Janet Yellen, worried by the specter of inflation, initially urged Biden administration officials to scale back the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan by a third, according to an advance copy of a biography on the Treasury secretary,” Bloomberg reports.
Writes Owen Ullman: “Privately, Yellen agreed with Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly.”
CEOs Get Jittery About Economy
Wall Street Journal: “Over the past week, business leaders have laid out in the starkest terms yet that a period of universal strength in the U.S. economy has given way to a muddled outlook in which a labor shortage, soaring stock markets and a healthy consumer are no longer givens.”
McCormick Concedes to Dr. Oz
David McCormick conceded the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for U.S. Senate to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, ending his campaign Friday night as he acknowledged an ongoing statewide recount wouldn’t give him enough votes to make up the deficit, the AP reports.
GOP Lawmaker Quits Race After Backlash Over Gun Stance
“In the wake of deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY), a soft-spoken congressman serving his first full term in the House, stunned fellow Republicans by embracing a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines,” the New York Times reports.
“It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him.”
“On Friday, facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.”
A Troubling Arrest
The U.S. Capitol Police said they arrested a man near the Capitol with high capacity magazines and body armor, Politico reports.
How Trump’s Team Conned Susan Collins
“When the Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, Sen. Susan Collins said she was flabbergasted, deeply troubled, even shocked. After all, soon-to-be-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had promised her in 2018 that Roe was a matter of settled law — despite his deeply conservative track record on abortion,” Rolling Stone reports.
“Turns out, Collins wasn’t just wrong about Kavanaugh. She was deliberately manipulated by Trump administration officials — and a future Supreme Court Justice — who viewed her as an easy mark.”
“Two former senior Trump White House officials tell Rolling Stone that the pro-choice Collins wasn’t even considered a serious threat to the devoutly conservative Kavanaugh. Instead, the team predicted she’d need only a vague assurance that the nominee would uphold the half-century-old ruling defending abortion rights.”
Florida’s Abortion Paradox
Florida, which recently passed steep restrictions on abortion, also has the nation’s third-highest abortion rate, Politico reports.
“This makes Florida an especially vivid laboratory to study the limits of the GOP’s push to restrict abortion. At what point does the Republican-dominated legislature in Tallahassee, unaccustomed recently to negative consequences at the polls, discover it has awakened a constituency that had come to rely on abortion as an important option in navigating their lives?”
Unlike Anything In American History
John Avlon gives a preview of the January 6 committee’s public hearings scheduled for next week.
Fetterman Failed to Disclose Previous Heart Condition
“A cardiologist who examined Lt. Gov. John Fetterman following his stroke said the Democratic Senate nominee has a type of cardiomyopathy, a heart disease that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. He said the pacemaker-defibrillator Fetterman received, along with diet, medication and exercise should allow him to go on with his campaign,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
“The Allegheny County cardiologist also said Fetterman ignored his advice back in 2017, when Fetterman was experiencing swollen feet and went to see him.”
NRA Membership Dues Keep Shrinking
“As a disturbing string of mass shootings focuses the public spotlight on gun violence, the embattled National Rifle Association appears to have suffered another year of diminished membership revenue and cuts to core programs,” ABC News reports.
Russia Entrenches In Ukraine
“The ruble is now an official currency in the southern Kherson region, alongside the Ukrainian hryvnia,” the AP reports.
“Residents there and in Russia-controlled parts of the Zaporizhzhia region are being offered expedited Russian passports. The Kremlin-installed administrations in both regions have talked about plans to become part of Russia.”
Washington Post: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is digging in for a long war of attrition over Ukraine and will be relentless in trying to use economic weapons, such as a blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, to whittle away Western support for Kyiv.”
DeSantis Threatens Special Olympics with $27.5M Fine
The Special Olympics USA Games, scheduled for next week in Orlando, rescinded its Covid-19 vaccine requirement for the competition after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration warned they could face $27.5 million in fines, ABC News reports.
Another Proud Boy Pleads Guilty
A Proud Boys member who was caught on video joining a mob pursuing police officers and smashing a sign inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pleaded guilty Friday to a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, NBC News reports.
New York Redistricting Redux
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Warnock Slams Herschel Walker In New Ad
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) put out a brutal ad showing challenger Herschel Walker talking to conservative pundit Glenn Beck about Covid-19.
Said Walker: “Right now, you know what, I’m gonna say something I probably shouldn’t. Do you know right now, I have something that can bring you into a building that would clean you from Covid as you walk through this dry mist. As you walk through the door, it will kill any Covid on your body. When you leave, it will kill the virus as you leave. This here product — they don’t want to talk about that. They don’t want to hear about that.”
The ad simply ends with: “Is Herschel Walker really ready to represent Georgia?”
Aide Warned Secret Service of Risk to Mike Pence
“The day before a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff called Mr. Pence’s lead Secret Service agent to his West Wing office,” the New York Times reports.
“The chief of staff, Marc Short, had a message for the agent, Tim Giebels: The president was going to turn publicly against the vice president, and there could be a security risk to Mr. Pence because of it.”
“The stark warning — the only time Mr. Short flagged a security concern during his tenure as Mr. Pence’s top aide — was uncovered recently during research by this reporter for an upcoming book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, to be published in October.”
Pennsylvania Court Orders Count of Undated Ballots
“A Pennsylvania court ordered election officials to count undated mail-in ballots for now in a nationally watched Republican Senate primary, granting a temporary injunction to David McCormick as he trailed Dr. Mehmet Oz amid a statewide recount,” the New York Times reports.
