“The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked 11-11 on the nomination of Steven Dettelbach to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,” Politico reports.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “could move to advance the nomination on the floor later Thursday.”
A new Economist/You Gov poll finds that 56% of Americans believed that the country is currently going through an economic recession.
The Economist: “Whether Merrick Garland might charge him is another matter. While prosecuting hundreds of foot-soldiers of the Capitol riot, Joe Biden’s attorney-general has given no indication that he intends to pursue Mr Trump. A cautious institutionalist, Mr Garland is intent on removing Mr Barr’s taint of politicization from his department. Arresting the previous president would make that hard.”
“As Ms Cheney knows, the prospects of blocking Mr Trump electorally are receding. Most Republicans say he won the election and hardly any Republican politician dares say otherwise. On June 14th a Trump-backed primary challenger defeated Tom Rice of South Carolina, making him the fifth of the ten Republican House members who voted to impeach Mr Trump to be pushed out. Mr Trump is the clear favorite to be the Republican nominee in 2024. It is why Mr Garland’s decision looks so important. Yet that will perhaps make him even more reluctant to act.”
Charlie Sykes: “Beyond the grift, the key to understanding Bannon — and his influence on the MAGA right— is recognizing that he’s a revolutionary, who knows he doesn’t need to persuade, and who doesn’t need a majority. Bannon knows that he just needs a hard-core vanguard willing to do whatever it takes.”
“And his goal is to burn it all down.”
“This also explains the fundamental asymmetry of our politics. On today’s podcast we discuss whether Bannon is playing checkers while his opponents are playing chess.”
“But I suggested a different image: Bannon is bringing an axe to a chess game — and his opponents haven’t figured that out yet, even though he’s told us repeatedly who and what he is.”
Just Security has an excellent backgrounder on Donald Trump’s “fake electors’ scheme and how he hoped it would help him overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Mark Barabak: “Today, it seems hard to reconcile the nutty former UC Irvine professor who schemed to steal the 2020 election for President Trump with the candidate who inveighed against ‘fearmongering’ politicians and ‘the extreme right wing of the Republican Party.’ Who disparaged Rush Limbaugh and excoriated Pete Wilson’s 1996 presidential bid, saying the former California governor and San Diego mayor hoped ‘to cynically ride a tidal wave of white male rage and anti-immigration fervor right down the Potomac and into the White House.'”
“But there is a through-line, say those who have known and observed Navarro for decades: a monumental self-regard, a bottomless hunger for attention — he once showed up for a mayoral campaign event wearing nothing but a Speedo — and an utter lack of grounding principles.”
“Deborah Birx, who served as Covid response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, will give her first public testimony about her time in the Trump administration,” NBC News reports.
“Birx is scheduled to provide testimony on June 23 at a hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, led by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.”
“Nevada Republican Jim Marchant insisted there hadn’t been a legitimate election in his state in more than a decade. All of Nevada’s election winners since 2006, he said on a recent podcast, were ‘installed by the deep-state cabal,'” the AP reports.
“But when Marchant won the Republican nomination for Nevada secretary of state this week, he immediately celebrated the victory as legitimate.”
“Such inconsistency has become a hallmark of election deniers in Republican primary contests across the U.S. in this year’s midterms.”
“Even as national Democrats set off alarms over the threats posed by far-right Republican candidates, their campaign partners are pursuing an enormously risky strategy: promoting some of those same far-right candidates in G.O.P. primaries in hopes that extremists will be easier for Democrats to beat in November,” the New York Times reports.
“I think it’s been very clear for a very long time that I work with people who wish me harm. Who wish me physical harm, who wish me political harm, who wish me harm. And it’s not just Rep. Loudermilk. You have many members of Congress who have specifically used my name to incite violence. And this has been happening well before the 6th.”
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), quoted by Politico, on the video of Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s (R-GA) tour the day before the Capitol attack.
Mark Leibovich: “Let me put this bluntly: Joe Biden should not run for reelection in 2024. He is too old…”
“Stepping aside would permit Biden to shed the demands of being a disciplined candidate (never his strong suit). It would be immediately liberating, allowing the president to focus on what he’s extremely well suited to: being a familiar mensch and champion and consoler to a country in dire need of one. He could off-load all of the burdens and suspicions that come with electoral ambitions. Nothing buys goodwill for a politician like self-removal from consideration.”
“The age issue will only get worse if Biden runs again. The ‘whispers’ are becoming shouts. It has become thoroughly exhausting—for Biden and his party and, to some extent, the country itself. But the question quiets considerably when no one’s calculating how old a president born during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration will be in 2028.”
“A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.”
— Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, in prepared testimony to the January 6 Committee.
When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said publicly the U.S. wanted Ukraine to win it’s war with Russia, President Biden told them to tone it down, NBC News reports.
“U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that the trajectory of the war in Ukraine is untenable and are quietly discussing whether President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should temper his hardline public position that no territory will ever be ceded to Russia as part of an agreement to end the war.”
“Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley’s recent arrest by the FBI for his suspected involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol appears to have boosted his name recognition and favorability among GOP voters in Michigan,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“Kelley was arrested June 9. In a June 10-13 poll conducted for the Detroit Free Press and our outstate polling partners by EPIC-MRA of Lansing, 17% named Kelley as their preferred candidate for the August primary to determine which Republican candidate challenges Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November.”
“A day after… the news that Herschel Walker (R) had a secret 10-year-old son he fathered out of wedlock, the football star-turned-politician confirmed late Wednesday night that he has yet another son with a different woman that the public doesn’t know about—as well as a daughter that he had in college,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The second of Walker’s previously undisclosed sons was born to a woman living in Texas and is now 13 years old. Walker’s other son is 10, and Christian Walker, who has played a major role in Herschel’s political efforts and public persona, is 22.”
New Republic: Herschel Walker is running to be the Senate’s dumbest liar.
Sources close to Donald Trump told CNN he is nevertheless closer than ever to announcing another run for office.
“As more and more Republicans add Iowa and New Hampshire to their schedules and work to gauge the party’s appetite for fresh leadership, Trump has been telling friends and advisers he wants to put his potential rivals on notice — and soon.”
For members: Why Donald Trump May Announce Early
“It’s quite clear that Donald Trump has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself.”
— Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), quoted by AL.com, just a week after unsuccessfully begging Trump to re-endorse him in the Alabama Senate race.
“The third hearing by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol will focus on a wide-ranging pressure campaign then-President Donald Trump put on his own vice president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the transfer of power that day,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The committee will detail how Mr. Trump, over the course of several weeks leading up to Jan. 6, pushed Mr. Pence—who as vice president presided over the counting of Electoral College votes—to refuse to accept votes for Joe Biden from a handful of battleground states, throwing the election into chaos. The former president was following a playbook sketched out by lawyer John Eastman in a memo titled ‘January 6 scenario.’”
Reuters: Former Pence counsel to testify to January 6 Committee.
The hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET.
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.