Cindy McCain said the Republican Party has lost its way and that her late husband, former Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), would be pushing back if he were still alive, The Hill reports.
Said McCain: “I don’t believe my husband would recognize it.”
Faith in American System Drops
A new Monmouth poll finds just 36% of the public describes the American system of government as basically sound.
Boris Johnson Jokes to Staff About Doomed Effort
“Boris Johnson joked to staff he’d acted like a Japanese soldier fighting in the woods after the end of World War II by trying to cling to power last night, before realizing Thursday morning he had to go,” Bloomberg reports.
“It was a dramatic shift in tone that illustrates just how rapidly events unraveled for Johnson overnight.”
Ron Johnson Scrambled to Pull ‘Mass Murder’ Ad
Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) re-campaign scrambled to have a planned radio ad downplaying gun violence pulled after the July 4th mass shooting but The Intercept got a copy anyway.
Biden Will Try to Reset Relations with Saudis
“President Joe Biden will hold bilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his leadership team, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, when he visits the Middle East next week,” Reuters reports.
“The U.S. president’s sensitive trip will test his ability to reset relations with Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah.”
Democrats Have a Hispanic Problem
The Economist: “Democrats are starting to realize that they have a Hispanic problem. Party strategists who hoped that Donald Trump’s racially incendiary rhetoric, his campaign pledge of a big, beautiful border wall and the fiasco of his family-separation policy might have pushed more Hispanic voters into the Democratic camp found the opposite. Between 2016 and 2020, Mr Trump improved his share of the Hispanic vote, according to numbers crunched by Catalist, a Democratic-aligned political-data firm—from 29% to 37%. Among all major ethnic groups, that shift was the largest.”
“The Democratic erosion was worst along the Texas border and in Southern Florida—dimming Democrats’ hopes of winning Senate seats or governorships in those states.”
“Open borders and police abolition are dirty words, not the stuff of liberating slogans, for Hispanics who live along the southern border. Antipathy for encroaching socialism is especially high among Hispanics in southern Florida, many of whom arrived as refugees from dictatorial communist or leftist regimes.”
Democrats Reach Agreement on Tax Hike for Wealthy
“Senate Democrats have reached an agreement to raise taxes on some high earners whom they say are abusing a loophole to slash their tax bills,” NBC News reports.
“The lawmakers, the sources said, plan to close the tax break for those earning more than $400,000 a year, requiring them to pay 3.8 percent in taxes on certain income from pass-through businesses, in what is effectively a slimmed-down package after the Build Back Better Act stalled last year.”
IRS Launches Probe Into Audits of Comey and McCabe
The IRS said that it had asked the inspector general who oversees tax matters to investigate how James Comey, the former FBI director, and his deputy, Andrew McCabe — both perceived enemies of former President Donald Trump — came to be faced with rare, exhaustive audits that the agency says are supposed to be random, the New York Times reports.
Philip Bump: How unlikely were those Comey-McCabe audits? See for yourself.
Trump Raises the Price of His Photo Book
Donald Trump is selling signed copies of his coffee table book for $999 a copy, New York Magazine reports.
Where Is Dr. Oz?
Politico: “Mehmet Oz is trailing in polls. A key Republican has yet to endorse him since the celebrity doctor won the GOP nomination for Pennsylvania Senate more than a month ago. And Oz has gone dark on the airwaves since May 21 — even as his Democratic rival John Fetterman burnishes his brand on TV as a political outsider, and paints Oz as a carpetbagger from New Jersey.”
“This is not the general election kickoff in a pivotal Senate race that Republicans were hoping for.”
Democrats Should Be Talking About Birth Control
Chris Truax: “So if Democrats want to have any chance of surviving November, they need to stop trying to educate and start trying to motivate. Luckily for them, Republicans and the Supreme Court have just handed them what may be the biggest stick in the last half century of American politics.”
“So here is a second piece of political advice: Do talk about birth control.”
“In fact, talk about nothing but birth control and how Republicans want to ban it. You can start with Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs which points out that Griswold v. Connecticut—the 1965 case that made it illegal for states to regulate contraception—relied on the same reasoning as Roe and should now be struck down as well.”
Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal Are In Kyiv
“Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) traveled to Kyiv on Thursday and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in what is believed to be the first bipartisan congressional delegation to Ukraine since the war began,” Politico reports.
Business Executives Have Gotten Even More Republican
“U.S. boardrooms have become more Republican and more partisan over the past decade, according to a new study,” the Washington Post reports.
Trump Quit the Board of His Social Media Company
“Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company, records show, just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan,” the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports.
“Trump, the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, was one of six board members removed on June 8, state business records show.”
GOP Candidate Pleads Not Guilty to Capitol Riot Charges
“Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate to be Michigan’s next governor, pleaded not guilty Thursday to four misdemeanor charges tied to his alleged actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol,” the Detroit News reports.
Mass Shootings Are Terrorism
Mona Charen: “Massacres at supermarkets, churches, classrooms, shopping malls, and good God, July Fourth parades are not like other violence. They shatter our sense of safety. They destroy our sense of normal life. Who among us has not wondered whether we might fall victim to this madness at a ball game or a concert? This epidemic of mass random shootings is not like gang killings in cities. It’s like terrorism. It invades the normal, peaceful world—the places in which we must feel secure.”
J.D. Vance Compared Abortion to Slavery
Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance (R) compared abortion to slavery in an interview last fall, drawing a controversial parallel between America’s original sin and a procedure that until recently was a constitutional right,” Vice News reports.
Said Vance: “There’s something comparable between abortion and slavery, and that while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society.”
He added: “I really think abortion has really done something very socially destructive to us as people in how we see the most vulnerable and the most dependent among us. I think that’s one of the under-appreciated facts about abortion. It’s really distorted our entire society.”
Trump’s Final Days
Filmmaker Alex Holder’s documentary on the final days of the Trump administration, Unprecedented, will be streaming Sunday on Discovery+.
