“More Americans are relocating to Europe, driven across the Atlantic by the rising cost of living, inflated house prices, a surging dollar and political rancor at home,” Bloomberg reports.
“Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and France are among the most popular destinations.”
“Attorney General Merrick Garland reiterated Wednesday he would pursue investigations into the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, by following the facts and the law, after some advocates worried a recent memo signaled he would avoid investigating former President Donald Trump,” USA Today reports.
Said Garland: “No person is above the law in this country. I can’t say it any more clearly than that. There is nothing in the principles of prosecution and any other factors which prevent us from investigating anyone – anyone – who is criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election.”
“Members of the conservative Republican Study Committee thanked former Vice President Mike Pence for his actions on January 6 and encouraged him to run for President during a private meeting on Wednesday near the US Capitol in Washington,” CNN reports.
“Rishi Sunak will face off against Liz Truss for the Conservative leadership after Penny Mordaunt was eliminated from the contest,” the Times of London reports.
Politico: “Sunak and Truss will now go on to a wider vote of the Conservative Party’s rank-and-file members, with a spate of recent polls suggesting Sunak could struggle to beat Truss, despite comfortably securing the support of the most Tory lawmakers.”
Wall Street Journal: “While U.S. policy remains aimed at ending the North’s nuclear status, the program is now so far advanced that the priority is preventing its use.”
Former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler, who met with the January 6 committee earlier this week, “went on a profane and sexist rant on a livestream after his testimony, where he railed against the lawmakers and attacked other witnesses,” CNN reports.
“In the 27-minute livestream, Ziegler used vulgar and misogynistic language to attack Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, two women who worked for the Trump White House but have since publicly broken from the former President and cooperated with the January 6 panel.”
Said Ziegler of the lawmakers on the committee: “They’re Bolsheviks, so, they probably do hate the American founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can’t see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?”
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday lifted an injunction on the state’s 2019 anti-abortion law, which bans most abortions after about six weeks,” Axios reports.
“The law is likely to take effect later this summer.”
“A senior Secret Service official said agency employees received two emails — at least one prior to Jan. 6, 2021 — reminding them to preserve records on their cellphones, including text messages, before their devices were essentially ‘restored to factory settings’ and texts were lost as part of a planned reset and replacement program across the agency,” NBC News reports.
A new Quinnipiac poll finds President Biden with an upside down 31% to 60% job approval rating, the lowest score of his presidency.
Americans give Republicans in Congress a negative job approval rating, 23% to 68%, while Democrats in Congress get a similar 30% to 63% job approval.
In the generic ballot, 45% say they would want to see the Democratic Party win control of the House, while 44% say the Republican Party, and 11% did not offer an opinion.
Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman (D) gave his first interview since having a stroke and told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he’s “feeling really good,” said he has “nothing to hide” on the status of his health and described the lingering effects of his stroke as minor and infrequent.
Fetterman, 52, said he has “no physical limits,” walks 4 to 5 miles every day in 90-degree heat, understands words properly and hasn’t lost any of his memory.
“A bipartisan group of 16 senators on Wednesday released legislation that would clarify an 1887 law that then-President Donald Trump and his allies tried to use as part of their attempt to overturn the 2020 election results,” the Washington Post reports.
New York Times: “The legislation aims to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to the next, after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol demonstrated how the current law could be manipulated to disrupt the process. One measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge a state’s electoral votes when Congress meets to make its official count. It would also clarify that the vice president has no discretion over the results and set out the steps to begin a presidential transition.”
NBC News: “The bills come as the House’s Jan. 6 committee prepares to holds its last public hearing — at least for the time being — on Thursday outlining evidence it has received in connection to what it calls a plot to overturn the result of the 2020 election.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Wednesday that he is working to get sufficient Republican support for the Senate to pass a bill that would federally protect same-sex marriages, the Washington Post reports.
Related for members: A Very Powerful House Vote
A new Marquette Law School Poll finds approval of the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen to 38%, while 61% disapprove of how the Court is handling its job.
By contrast, approval of the Court stood at 66% in September 2020, with 33% disapproval then.
Democratic strategist Lis Smith on the Inside the Hive podcast:
“So if I’m on a Democratic campaign, and we’re concerned about him coming out of a primary, the good news is this: There’s a very, very vibrant, right-wing news ecosystem. And so what I would try to do is try to launder stories through there—Breitbart, Fox, Newsmax, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Free Beacon, those sorts of sites. Because I think what we’ve seen increasingly is that those types of sites are less likely to pick up from mainstream media.”
“If you get a negative story about DeSantis in the Washington Post, or New York Times, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, that might have been seen as the ultimate coup. But today, if you really want something to take root, and especially among Republican primary voters, I would go straight to the right. I’m sure that there are things from his time as governor that would put him at odds with the Republican base.”
“The U.S. Secret Service handed over just one text message thread in response to a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot,” CNBC reports.
“Casting herself as a mother and daughter, Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, addressed Congress one day after meeting with Jill Biden at the White House as their husbands seek to keep the world’s attention on the war ravaging Ukraine and the larger threat posed by Russian aggression,” the New York Times reports.
Said Zelenska: “Russia is destroying our people… An unprovoked invasive terrorist war is being waged against my country. We remain completely broken.”
“Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to testify Aug. 9 before a grand jury in Georgia that is collecting evidence in a probe of possible criminal meddling in that state’s 2020 presidential election by former President Donald Trump,” CNBC reports.
“Giuliani spearheaded legal efforts by the Republican president to overturn the electoral results in multiple swing states that were won that year by President Joe Biden.”
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) — who was endorsed by Donald Trump — shared a post on Facebook stating that Trump was “Not My President” just days before the former president’s inauguration in 2017, Fox News reports.
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.
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