“A House committee said on Thursday that it was investigating whether Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser, traded on his government position to land a $2 billion investment in his new private equity firm from a prominent Saudi Arabian wealth fund,” the New York Times reports.
U.S. Now In Fourth-Biggest Covid Surge
“The United States is now in its fourth-biggest Covid surge, according to official case counts – but experts believe the actual current rate is much higher,” The Guardian reports.
“America is averaging about 94,000 new cases every day, and hospitalizations have been ticking upward since April, though they remain much lower than previous peaks.”
Trump Endorses Blake Masters for Arizona Senate
“Former President Donald Trump has endorsed Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters (R) in a move that aides believe will give the Republican significant momentum ahead of the state’s August primary,” CNN reports.
“Masters, who is also backed by conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel, is running in a crowded field of GOP candidates seeking to take on Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in November.”
Paul Ryan Says Many Republicans Lacked ‘Guts’
Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that more House Republicans would have voted to impeach former President Donald Trump if they’d had the “guts,” the Myrtle Beach Sun News reports.
Said Ryan: “There are a lot of people who say they’re going to vote their conscious, they’re going to vote for the Constitution, they’re going to vote for their convictions but when it gets hard to do that they don’t do it.”
Lawyer Fined for Meritless Voter Fraud Lawsuit
“A Washington state nonprofit group and its attorney have been fined more than $28,000 by the state Supreme Court for making legally meritless claims alleging widespread vote fraud,” the Seattle Times reports.
Putin Fired Five More Generals
Russian President Vladimir Putin fired five more generals earlier this week, Pravda reports.
Trump Is Finally Boring
Rich Lowry: “It’s a blessing and a curse for formerly cutting-edge musicians to see their once radically countercultural material show up in TV ads for automobiles or other common consumer products. There’s no danger that Trump will ever be similarly laundered into the mainstream, or graduate into a beloved or respected elder statesman as almost all American presidents do at some point.”
“But he can become boring, which will put at risk one of the pillars of his appeal as the most wildly entertaining, madcap national political figure of our lifetimes.”
Sheryl Sandberg Mulls Running for Public Office
“Sheryl Sandberg may pursue a career in politics after she leaves Facebook, with some Beltway observers highlighting her high profile, a history of business success, a popular book, and a compelling personal story,” Insider reports.
“One person suggested Sandberg is eyeing Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat.”
What Makes a Republican a RINO?
William Saletan: “Trump may well succeed in purging Cheney and other Reagan Republicans from his party. In 2020, he scrapped the drafting of a platform entirely. He could do so again in 2024. Through purges, capitulations, and retirements, he might complete the transformation of the GOP into a party that worships dictators, ignores Russian aggression, tramples the Constitution, scorns the rule of law, and substitutes presidential favoritism for free markets.”
“That party might manage to gain and hold power for many years. It might even do so by winning elections. But it wouldn’t resemble the ‘Republican’ party any of us have known.”
Florida Supreme Court Turns Down Map Challenge
“The Florida Supreme Court refused on Thursday to consider a challenge to a new map of the state’s 28 congressional districts approved by the Republican State Legislature, paving the way for November elections to be based on districts that a lower court said diluted the voting power of Black residents, in violation of the State Constitution,” the New York Times reports.
“The court’s two-sentence denial said it was premature for the justices to consider a suit seeking to overturn the congressional map because the case had not yet wound its way through the state court system, which could take months or years.”
Jim Banks Explores Run for GOP Whip
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) is exploring a bid for Republican whip should his party take control of the House, Politico reports.
Biden’s Latest Pivot Seems Flat-Footed
CNN: “Aides and allies worry that the West Wing is making the same mistakes as they tout the White House’s big pivot to inflation — which they know is a defining issue for the midterms — using all the methods Biden and his top advisers keep going back to: A Wall Street Journal op-ed, a basic photo-op Oval Office meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman and Treasury secretary, dispatching Cabinet secretaries for short TV interviews.”
“Biden himself, meanwhile, is staying barely visible, spending all of this week at the White House and his beach home in Delaware, removed from any interaction with anyone who’s actually on edge about their bills going up.”
Related for members: Why Biden’s Pivot to the Economy Could Backfire
A Few Common-Sense Gun Reforms Might Work
Mona Charen: “Perhaps all of these killers would have been able to lay hands on guns already owned by individuals. Maybe. But it would have been much harder than walking into a gun store. In most cases, these killers are mentally unstable, impulsive, and socially maladroit. Purchasing a weapon via private sale would be more challenging.”
“So making it more difficult to purchase guns—say, by adding more complete background checks, increasing the minimum age to 21, requiring waiting periods, or adopting ‘red flag laws’ that make it possible for family members or police to ask courts to have a person’s guns temporarily removed—would have inhibited the vast majority of the killers listed above.”
Elliot Ackerman: Our narrative of mass shootings is killing us.
Quote of the Day
“As somebody who just bought my first electric vehicle, I’m driving by the pump. And I won’t tell you the motion I’m making when I drive by.”
— Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), in an interview with MLive.
Fetterman’s Health Remains a Mystery
NBC News: “Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman does not have a timetable for returning to the campaign trail, sparking some worries in the party nearly three weeks after he suffered a stroke and surgeons implanted a pacemaker with a defibrillator to regulate his heartbeat.”
“Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, has appeared publicly only in recorded video since the stroke. His wife is speaking to the media on his behalf. And the situation has prompted Democrats to refresh their knowledge of state ballot-replacement law — the deadline is in August.”
Inside Biden’s Struggle to Break Through
CNN: “Biden and his inner circle get weekly readouts of the metrics on local newspaper coverage of his speeches, how long and for what he was covered on cable, but also videos that staff post on Twitter and other social media interactions. Those reports go on the piles with internal memos from pollsters saying Biden isn’t breaking through in traditional news outlets and that the people who are engaged are mostly voters who’ve already made up their minds.”
“But beneath this struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm. They’re still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there’s a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive.”
A Unique Platform
Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) tweeted out his platform for his Republican Senate primary race in Missouri:
- Get Kamala Harris to resign.
- Have POTUS appoint Trump as vice president.
- Get Joe Biden to resign.
- Finish Keystone XL.
- Finish the wall.
The New MAGA Establishment
Bill Kristol: “There is no Trump ‘fever’ that is going to break, because Trumpism is now not a fever. It is an entrenched, all-encompassing fact of Republican and conservative life; one that is likely to be with us for quite a while. Trump may personally fade, but Trumpism is here to stay, for the foreseeable future.”
“Which means that authoritarianism—with inflections, or at least overtones, of fascism—will be here for a while, too. With an infrastructure, with a popular base, and with elite enablers. In other words: With its own establishment.”
