“Speaker Nancy Pelosi is resisting pressure from the Trump administration to quickly approve an updated North American trade deal and is telling lawmakers and union officials that a planned study of the agreement could drag on well into the fall,” the New York Times reports.

David Frum: “The full report is rich with details. But that’s the essence. A foreign power interfered in the U.S. election to help the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign welcomed the help and repeatedly lied about it. The lying successfully obscured some questions the investigation sought to answer; in the end, it found insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. President Trump, in public and in private, worked to stop the investigation.”

“Those are the facts. What are the remedies? Mueller underscored at his press statement: He did not exonerate the president. Under the Department of Justice rules he was subject to, he lacked the power to act.”

Benjamin Wittes: “Congress’s current strategy is an incoherent muddle. While individual Democratic leaders may well have their eye on the ball, the aggregate output of a disparate committee chairs has reflected no discernable strategy. Some, judging from their statements, seem focused chiefly on getting the full, unredacted Mueller report and the investigative work product that underlies it. Why exactly this is the focus is unclear to me; the marginal information Congress is likely to glean from the full report is small. Much of this material is already available to certain members under admittedly limited conditions. And the legal impediments to the production of the remainder are substantial. Focusing on laying bare what is currently redacted is most unlikely to produce any game-changers. Other than establishing the principle that Congress can get it, it’s not clear what great oversight interest it serves.”

“At the same time, the key committees have only shown limited interest in actually unpacking in public the voluminous material that Mueller has publicly reported and that is thus readily available for discussion. As of today, this requires a major rethink. Mueller himself is not riding in on a white horse to explain it all. If Congress is going to highlight what’s in that report and what Mueller found, it’s going to have to do it on its own.”

Politico: “The party hoped a relentless anti-abortion message coupled with attempts to tag Democrats as socialists could help them regain the House majority. This year alone, House Republicans have tried 50 times to force a vote on ‘born alive’ legislation — which mandates medical care for babies who survive attempted abortions — in an attempt to corner Democrats in swing districts through procedural floor tactics.”

“But Republicans have gone mostly quiet since Alabama’s governor signed a bill into law that all but bans abortion — even in cases of rape and incest — and punishes doctors who provide the procedure with up to 99 years to life behind bars.”

Rick Hasen: “No one knows if a fairly done impeachment inquiry will hurt Democrats politically. No one knows if failing to seriously pursue an impeachment inquiry will hurt Democrats more. So it makes sense to do what is constitutionally required.  After all, it is not as though Pelosi is saying she doesn’t believe Trump obstructed justice or that these are not serious enough charges to merit impeachment. It seems a pure political calculation, which is arguably a dereliction of Congress’s responsibility to investigate.”

“If the House impeaches Trump though a fair process based on strong evidence of obstruction of justice, let the American people watch Mitch McConnell run a sham Senate trial—with Chief Justice John Roberts presiding—and let Republican senators vote against conviction in the face of that evidence. Even if McConnell runs no trial, every senator will be asked her position on whether or not the evidence adduced by the House merits removing the president from office.”

“Sure that’s a political risk for Democrats, but so is doing nothing. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do as a matter of constitutional responsibility. Mueller was saying no less.”