A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
NO COMMENT!
TPM’s Emine Yücel caught up with Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) as he was leaving the House floor Wednesday to get his response to the TPM report on the substantial evidence tying certain extreme right-wing online personas to members of his own staff.
“You have to contact my communications,” Gosar said.
Reminded that TPM had reached out to him and his press team multiple times, Gosar said: “No comment.”
‘We Are Tired Of His Gaslighting’
Haaretz: Jewish Groups Slam Rep. Gosar After Staffers Revealed as Followers of White Supremacist Fuentes
House Dems Decry Gosar’s Extremist Ties
TPM’s report on Gosar staffers began to get some traction among House Democrats.
Where’s Kevin McCarthy?
The man who famously ended Rep. Paul Gosar’s banishment from committee assignments and reinstated him on the Oversight Committee has yet to publicly address TPM’s Sunday report on substantial evidence tying extreme right-wing online personas to his digital director.
TPM’s Hunter Walker On Democracy Now
Santos Expulsion Vote Expected Today
House Democrats will likely get a floor vote today on expelling serial fabulist and now-indicted Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Expulsion would require a two-thirds vote.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is trying to take the wind out of the sails of the expulsion vote by moving to refer Santos to the Ethics Committee for what he’s billing as a speedy disposition.
Narrator: The House Ethics Committee is never speedy.
Crunch Time On Debt Ceiling
At their White House meeting Tuesday, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy agreed to shrink the number of participants in their hostage negotiations over the debt ceiling.
Longtime Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti and OMB Director Shalanda Young will join White House Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell in repping Biden in the talks with McCarthy’s team, which will include Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA).
House Dems Moving Ahead With Discharge Petition
WSJ: “House Democrats plan to begin collecting signatures Wednesday for a discharge petition to raise the debt ceiling, a long-shot parliamentary maneuver designed to circumvent House Republican leadership and force a vote.”
Biden Cuts Asia-Pacific Trip Short
With the debt-ceiling hostage-taking moving into the crunch phase, President Biden is ditching the back half of his Asia-Pacific trip that begins today. He will return to Washington Sunday.
John Durham’s Dirty Game
Paul Waldman: “The Durham investigation was a flop. But it’s a propaganda triumph.”
Harry Litman: “It’s a sort of time bomb, set in 2019 to go off now, as the 2024 campaign gets started.”
Marcy Wheeler: 8 things not mentioned in the Durham report
Rollins Out In Boston
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins is poised to resign ahead of a DOJ inspector general report expected to be critical of her attendance at a DNC fundraiser featuring first lady Jill Biden.
Bizarro
Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan encountered an intruder in his house in the middle of the night last month who had managed to elude the detection of Sullivan’s Secret Service detail. From the WaPo:
Sullivan has a round-the-clock Secret Service detail. But agents stationed outside the house were unaware that an intruder had gotten inside the home, located in the West End neighborhood of Washington, until the man had already left and Sullivan came outside to alert the agents, the two people said.
The intruder appeared to be intoxicated and confused about where he was, according to people briefed on the incident. There is no evidence the person knew Sullivan or sought to harm him, they said.
Feinstein Fading Fast
Slate’s Jim Newell: A Brief, Concerning Conversation With Dianne Feinstein
A Clarence Thomas Hearing In All But Name
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is using his position as chair of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee to summon senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, a Reagan appointee from the District of Massachusetts, for a hearing today titled: “Review of Federal Judicial Ethics Processes at the Judicial Conference of the United States.”
As Bloomberg’s Zoe Tillman first reported a couple of weeks ago, Wolf objected to the handling of a financial disclosure omission by Justice Clarence Thomas all the way back in 2012. Whitehouse seems poised to explore that episode as a way of coming at the current Thomas scandal over failure to report gifts and financial dealings.
Joyce Vance has more of the backstory.
N. Carolina Now Has A 12-Week Abortion Ban
Last night the GOP supermajorities in the North Carolina legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. Effective July 1, abortions in North Carolina shift from being legal up to 20 weeks to being legal only up to 12 weeks.
Yeah, There’s Something Wrong With Him
I was never an Elon fan boy, can’t bear to give him much of my attention, and hesitate to force him on you; however, this interview – as ham-handed as it was – felt especially revealing of the kind of person Musk is.
Priceless
The subject matter of this quote almost doesn’t matter:
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