The Hill: “In a 33-page brief, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked the court to use a Mississippi case to be reviewed next term as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and related rulings.”
Wrote the three Senators: “Roe and Casey should be overruled, and the question of abortion legislation should be returned to the states.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Youngkin has so far declined to complete a candidate questionnaire issued by the advocacy group, which asks candidates questions on topics like banning assault weapons and limiting handgun purchases. Traditionally, the survey has been considered part of the NRA’s endorsement process, which, among other things, includes promotion among its grassroots network.”
“Youngkin frequently talks about his support for the Second Amendment during campaign stops, and during an April appearance he described himself as a ‘lifetime member of the NRA.’”
Amid public backlash and calls for his resignation, Delaware state Rep. Gerald Brady (D) said that he would not seek reelection after his current term expires, the Associated Press reports.
Brady accidentally copied an advocate of decriminalzing prostitution on an email: “Is the dude basically saying, if we provide free Blowjobs for Uncle Pervie there will be few rapes and few chink broads will be shipped in CONEX containers to the Port of Wilmington??”
Former President Donald Trump praised the Republican-controlled state Senate for its ongoing audit of the 2020 election results while saving plenty of time to berate Gov. Doug Ducey (R), Insider reports.
He also threw cold water on supporting Ducey in a possible 2022 Senate campaign: “He’s not getting my endorsement, I can tell you.”
“The House’s select committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump won’t hesitate to subpoena members of Congress or Mr. Trump, and will try to enforce the subpoenas in court if necessary,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): “Anybody who had a conversation with the White House and officials in the White House while the invasion of the Capitol was going on is directly in the investigative sights of the committee.”
A Tennessee pastor threatened to boot mask-wearers from his church, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
Said Pastor Greg Locke: “If they go through round two and you start showing up with all these masks and all this nonsense, I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church.”
New York Times: “Eric Adams, for his part, is seizing the mayoral bully pulpit, moving to cement a national reputation as a Democrat who speaks with uncommon authority about both public safety and police reform… In some ways, it is a difficult playbook to replicate. Mr. Adams, who will be New York’s second Black mayor if he wins in November, as expected, grew up in poverty and says he was beaten by police officers before joining the force himself…”
“But some party officials and lawmakers also say that Mr. Adams offers a template for how to discuss matters of crime and justice, urgent issues for Democratic candidates across the country as the early contours of the 2022 midterm campaigns take shape… Whether party leaders are ultimately comfortable with Mr. Adams as a national standard-bearer will hinge on how he governs.”
“Senior Biden officials are carefully monitoring the impact of the delta variant on Britain, as concerns intensify within the administration about the potential economic damage of the virus to the United States,” the Washington Post reports.
“If Britain’s reopening continues without a new wave of hospitalizations and lockdowns, America’s recovery could prove more likely to remain on course.”
“With a rising drumbeat of criticism, several Republican Georgia legislators are building a case for the state government to take over Fulton County elections,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“The newfound power to fire local elections management, created by Georgia’s voting law, worries voting rights advocates, who say it could be abused for partisan purposes to tamper with the heavily Democratic county.”
“Though a state monitor reported sloppy management, three counts of Fulton’s ballots arrived at similar results and state election investigators haven’t found fraud.”
Josh Marshall: “Among the vaccinated there’s a growing realization that we’re going backwards, seeing rates go up, seeing some mask mandates come back because of the non-vaccinated. And people are getting frustrated.”
“That is a big part of why you’re seeing Republicans not simply encouraging people to get vaccinated but even more trying to ditch the vaccine-resistant brand. They’re feeling exposed to shifting public opinion. In short, they don’t want to be accountable for what they’ve done.”
Nicholas Lemann: “It’s distinctly possible that the Supreme Court, as early as next year, could signal that it considers efforts aimed explicitly at helping Black people to be unconstitutional. In June, the Court asked the Biden Administration to give its views on the Harvard case. If the Court decides to take it, that would be seen as good news by the plaintiffs and bad news by Harvard, which has won in the lower courts…”
“It’s by no means clear that the Supreme Court has shared in the resurgence of passion for racial-justice issues that has swept through many other leading American institutions. This could be one of those Court decisions which set off not just private legal readjustments but public demonstrations, and years of political organizing… It will be fitting if the Court takes the Harvard case. The long-running battles over affirmative action involve a clash between two opposing principles, both arguably invented at Harvard: meritocracy and diversity.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said that state and healthcare employees will soon be required to show proof they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 — with those who remain uninoculated subject to a regular testing regimen, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The Department of Veterans Affairs will require 115,000 of its frontline health care workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the next two months, making it the first federal agency to mandate that employees be inoculated,” the New York Times reports.
Matt Lewis: “While lack of communal ties may be killing us at the micro level, on the macro level this phenomenon has contributed to numerous societal ills, including the rise of Trumpism.”
“In the 2016 Republican primary, for example, it was well documented that Trump performed better in places where people were socially atomized. For example, Republicans who attended church regularly were less likely to support Trump.”
“If you are surrounded by friends and family or are otherwise well-adjusted, this probably won’t resonate. But if you are lonely and marginalized (or think you are, like so many of today’s MAGA fans), it will resonate.”
Coming this fall: Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang.
“With America’s stagnant institutions failing to keep pace with technological change, we grow more polarized as tech platforms supplant our will while feasting on our data. Yang introduces us to the various ‘priests of the decline’ of America, including politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve.”
A new study finds the recent deadly heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, during which all-time temperature records were shattered by several degrees, is a prologue to what is coming across much of the U.S., Europe and Asia, Axios reports.
Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) “failed to properly disclose dozens of stock and stock-option trades together worth at least $70,000 and as much as $1.1 million,” Insider reports.
Moore is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and invested in the defense contractor Raytheon.
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.