Playbook: “Republicans are already previewing the talking points they’ll employ as they move to filibuster the bill. As we reported… the NRSC is encouraging GOP candidates to change the topic from abortion rights overall to less-popular facets of the issue where Republicans feel they can win.”
Russian Smart TVs Hacked
Russian television schedules were hacked to display an anti-war message as the country celebrated with a Victory Day parade, the BBC reports.
The name of every programme was changed to: “On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.”
Select Committee Must Decide on Calling Trump or Pence
“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has interviewed nearly 1,000 people. But the nine-member panel has yet to talk to the two most prominent players in that day’s events — former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence,” the AP reports.
“As the investigation winds down and the panel plans a series of hearings in June, members of the committee are debating whether to call the two men, whose conflict over whether to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win was at the center of the attack.”
How Mark Meadows Tried to Keep Trump in Power
Washington Post: “Meadows granted conspiracy theory-peddling activists direct access to the Oval Office and personally connected some with the president… He pressed the Justice Department to investigate spurious and debunked claims, including a bizarre theory that an Italian operation changed votes in the United States — an allegation a top Justice official called ‘pure insanity,’ … He also pushed the Justice Department, unsuccessfully, to try to invalidate the election results in six states through federal court action.”
“Now Meadows’s actions are at the center of investigations by both the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and the Justice Department, which is examining whether to press contempt-of-Congress charges against him as well as its own inquiry into the events surrounding the insurrection.”
USA Today: Panel faces dilemma in coaxing defiant GOP.
Putin’s ‘Doomsday Plane’ Fails to Make Appearance
“Its flyover was much-hyped, but Vladimir Putin’s ‘Doomsday Plane’—a specially equipped jet from which the Russian elite can allegedly run a nuclear war—was conspicuous by its absence at Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow on Monday,” the Daily Beast reports.
“It was reported that the flyover of the plane was canceled because of bad weather, however footage showed Moscow enjoying a pleasant and sunny spring day and weather services suggested there was wind of just 3 mph.”
New York Times: Putin defends his Ukraine invasion, invoking World War II, but does not signal an escalation.
Congress Set to Clash on Abortion
“Congress returns this week to debate access to abortion, more U.S. aid to Ukraine and new funding to combat Covid-19, taking up high-stakes domestic and foreign matters ahead of a late-May Memorial Day break,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Providers Commit to Low-Income Broadband Program
“Twenty internet providers, including AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have agreed to help offer high-speed internet to millions of unconnected households through the bipartisan infrastructure law,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The program has run up against an early hurdle because the people who need it most are the hardest to reach because they aren’t online.”
China Conducted Exercises Near Taiwan
“China’s armed forces carried out another round of exercises near Taiwan last week to improve joint combat operations,” Reuters reports.
Trump Claimed He Had to Run the Military
Donald Trump responded to a 60 Minutes interview with his former defense secretary, Mark Esper, calling him a “a RINO incapable of leading.”
He added: “Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective, and because of it, I had to run the military. I took out ISIS, Qasem Soleimani, al-Baghdadi, rebuilt the military with $2.5 trillion, created Space Force, and so much more.”
Pennsylvania GOP Senate Primary Is a Toss Up
A new Trafalgar Group poll in Pennsylvania shows Mehmet Oz (R) leading the Republican U.S. Senate primary with 26%, followed by Kathy Barnette (R) at 23% and Dave McCormick (R) at 22%.
Earlier for members: A Wildcard In Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate Race
Trump ‘Weirded Out’ by Madison Cawthorn Scandals
Rolling Stone: “Just a month after he invited Cawthorn to speak at a North Carolina rally, Trump has grown increasingly annoyed and disappointed with his MAGA apprentice. The twice-impeached former president has described some of what he’s heard about Cawthorn’s latest woes — and the online sexual imagery associated with it — as ‘gross.’”
One source “said that lately Trump had voiced bewilderment and disgusted confusion about what he’d been told of the flood of leaks and footage, asking at one point in recent days if one of the allegations was that Cawthorn was ‘fucking his cousin?’”
Said another: “President Trump is completely weirded out by the allegations.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“It’s very clear that the Democratic Party hasn’t had a coherent story to tell about the Republican Party and what’s happened to it.”
— White House adviser Anita Dunn, quoted by CNN.
Bono and The Edge Perform In Kyiv Subway Station
“The sound of Sunday Bloody Sunday blasted out of a subway station in central Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday as Bono and The Edge took to a makeshift stage in a makeshift bomb shelter and performed a surprise 40-minute concert to a backdrop of air-raid sirens and war,” the Irish Times reports.
British Scientist Rips Antiabortion Lawyers
“A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade,” The Guardian reports.
Is Same-Sex Marriage Next to Fall?
“When the Supreme Court heard arguments in December over the fate of the constitutional right to abortion, it was already clear that other rights, notably including same-sex marriage, could be at risk if the court overruled Roe v. Wade,” the New York Times reports.
“The logic of that legal earthquake, Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted, would produce a jurisprudential tsunami that could sweep away other precedents, too.”
“The logic of the opinion left plenty of room for debate. It said a right to abortion cannot be found in the Constitution or inferred from its provisions. The same could be said, using the draft opinion’s general reasoning, for contraception, gay intimacy and same-sex marriage, rights established by three Supreme Court decisions that were discussed at some length in the argument in December.”
Antiabortion HQ Hit by Molotov Cocktail
Vandals set a fire inside the Madison headquarters of the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action late Saturday or early Sunday, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
Biden to Target GOP on Inflation
President Biden is preparing a major speech Tuesday to address inflation, and will contrast his plans to lower costs for American families with those offered by congressional Republicans, Axios reports.
Supreme Court Majority Still Backs Overturning Roe
As of last week, when the draft Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade first leaked, five justices were still on board with the gist of what Justice Samuel Alito had drafted back in February, the Washington Post reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts has backed an incremental approach to banning abortions, but also to keep in place key tenets of Supreme Court precedent on abortion rights.
